POSTAR seeks to measure ALL out-of-home advertising

As Adrian noted first, POSTAR, the audience research body for the UK out of home advertising industry, seems pretty bullish about the prospects of OOH, and expects the industry to grow both in terms of raw revenue and the number of different formats/locales that we'll find ads in.

They plan to start a new research project aimed at unifying measurement metrics and techniques for all forms of out-of-home advertising, including relative newcomers like ads on buses, rail, taxis, retail and in "leisure" settings. While we'll have to wait a little while to hear how it's going (their first results are due in Q3 of 2009), we should get some interesting insights into the relative merits of one form of OOH advertising versus another:

Central to the new Postar system is the innovative use of GPS technology. Consumers will be given handheld GPS devices that will track their exact movements, including brief trips to local shops, the gym or even the school run. This precise and comprehensive record of participants’ journeys is expected to significantly increase the accuracy of estimated exposure to out of home advertising.

Postar has appointed the leading media research company Ipsos MORI as its preferred partner. Under the contract, the audience research sample size will be trebled from its current base to 20,000 people, reflecting the commitment of the out-of-home industry to providing a step change in the detail in which out-of-home exposure is reported. The GPS technology will be provided by leading Czech company MGE Data, who have similar contracts in other parts of Europe.

It sounds like the GPS data will merely be cross-referenced against a list of ad placements for a sort-of Opportunity to See (OTS) measurement instead coupled with some kind of recognition technology a'la Arbitron's Portable People Meter (PPM), but there's no doubt that such a comprehensive undertaking can only improve our understanding of how much media people are exposed to in a given day, week or month. I'm looking forward to it... too bad we have to wait so long :)

Tags: out of home advertising, OOH, POSTAR